(To browse the gallery, click on the first thumbnail, then click on each of the photos to be taken to the next.)

February 15 was the end-date for the golden eagle camera-trap survey, so we were very fortunate indeed that an eagle finally showed up here yesterday for the first time. Paula had decided to set up a third camera trap at the edge of a large talus slope near the end of the mountain, baited with another dead cow, and it was that camera that first captured a blurry photo of a mature golden eagle yesterday. Trish Miller, the biologist heading up the project, confirmed the i.d., and Paula then drove up to the top of the field to collect the photos from the spruce grove camera — whence all the photos in this post. The eagle photos are from yesterday morning, and I’ve included some other photos from the past two weeks just to show some of the other wildlife that’s been coming in. The barred owl is an especial treat. (See also the earlier pictures I posted of a bobcat, a fisher, and two red-tailed hawks.)

Trish and her partner Mike Lanzone have been busy trapping eagles found at other locations in Pennsylvania. So far they’ve fitted two others with transmitters, one in Tuscarora State Forest and the other in Rothrock State Forest, and they have a date to go trap a third tomorrow. We hope “our” eagle will hang around till next week, which is the earliest they’ll be able to move their trapping equipment out here.

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Dave Bonta (bio) crowd-sources his problems by following his gut, which he shares with 100 trillion of his closest microbial friends — a close-knit, symbiotic community comprising several thousand species of bacteria, fungi, and protozoa. In a similarly collaborative fashion, all of Dave’s writing is available for reuse and creative remix under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. For attribution in printed material, his name (Dave Bonta) will suffice, but for web use, please link back to the original. Contact him for permission to waive the “share alike” provision (e.g. for use in a conventionally copyrighted work).

Success! I’m in no way tempted to hold one, but – like Deb’s husband – eager to landscape with my own dead cows. Chicago’s first nesting bald eagles for probably 150 years were just located. Perhaps goldens await a properly redolent invitation.

My abiding image of golden eagles is the pair nesting (so sensibly!) above a whiskey distillery on a Scottish island. However, even though they tumbled round the bowl of the landscape and we could walk and climb to within an extraordinarily close distance from their nest we never saw them like this fabulous specimen. Roll on the net-gun and a successful capture!